I just encountered the same bug that Aaron Delp blogged about in January:
It appears we have found a possible bug in the Deploy from Template Command in ESX 3.5. When you create a Windows Server based template and then try to deploy directly into an Active Directory with customization, the new system will get an error that a service failed to start when the machine is launched. This is because the VMWare BootRun service is not removing itself properly after deployment. This does not happen with deployments into a workgroup.
If you aren’t familiar with the BootRun service, this service will make all of the customizations after the sysprep work is complete during the deployment. You usually never see it because it runs on the first boot, makes the changes, and then removes itself from the machine.
In this case, the files are removed but the service entry is still there, hence the error that it can’t start up. VMWare has confirmed this to be a problem and they are investigating.
This customer runs the latest and greatest version of ESX and VirtualCenter so it appears that the bug hasn’t been fixed yet.
Hey Duncan – Just a quick heads up, my blog has changed addresses from aarondelp.blogspot.com to http://www.bladevault.info. Thanks for the link and I’ll check with the customer about an update today.
Thank you!
Aaron
Although I rarely deploy templates straight into AD, this is good information to know.
Hey Duncan – While I am on hold with VMware customer support how did you fix this issue?
I am having the same issue with a Windows 2000 server. What’s VMware recommend way to remove this service from Windows.
Could I write a script to remove this and add it to the runonce option within the customization file?
this customer added a script to his template that removed the service for hum.
Hey Duncan, ran into the same issue with some of the VM’s that I brought back from NL. Ran “SC Delete Bootrun” it removed the VMware BootRun Service and stopped getting the notice service or driver failed at startup.
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=1005991&sliceId=1&docTypeID=DT_KB_1_1&dialogID=16708169&stateId=1%200%2016706586